You can trigger notifications from an app - however, I’m not sure whether apps right now can run in the background and query the feed regularly. It doesn’t seem to work right now. So the only way you would get a notification is if your app is on top (I need to clarify this).

Also I noted: Coming from websites - I have not thought of ways to reload the feed So Firefox OS apps are different from small mobile websites.

I can’t open it from the App Manager / Simulator. It is opening the app directory where .webapp is instead of the app itself. Is it because your app use python? Do you know how could I test it in my Desktop?